


A star awakens

by Scoby



Series: Reylo around Europe [3]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Accidental Kissing, Alternate Universe - Ballet, Alternate Universe - Dance, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Amilyn Holdo Ships It, Ben Solo & violin, Cheesy, Conductor Ben Solo, Cute, Dancer Finn (Star Wars), Dancer Rey (Star Wars), Director Poe Dameron, F/M, Falling in Love in Public, Gossip Media, Happy Ending, Public Display of Affection, Vienna, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000, public love confession, reylo kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:42:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26513887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scoby/pseuds/Scoby
Summary: The page that Amilyn has open is half devoted to a picture of Rey and Solo kissing on the edge of the stage. The title calls it boldly ‘The Reylo Kiss’, and the text dives eagerly into elaborate speculations about a backstage romance betweenWiener Staatsoper’s best conductor and a supposed nobody from the corps de ballet, who turns out to be an awakening star.“You see, this is what sells the tickets”, Amilyn points out. “Poe, I want them to do it again. Preferably after every performance and progressively longer every time.”“What, seriously? You want me totellthem?”“Uh-huh.”
Relationships: Finn & Jannah (Star Wars), Poe Dameron & Amilyn Holdo, Poe Dameron & Finn & Rey, Rey & Rose Tico, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Reylo around Europe [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1927789
Comments: 7
Kudos: 85





	1. Chapter 1

The air smells of sweat and rosin. Twenty panting breaths are the only audible sounds on the stage. But not for long. Poe’s hand brushes his curls back from his forehead – a gesture that is always followed by his mouth opening.

“That was better, Jannah. But Finn, I still want her a little lower with the bends and higher with the splits. Can you show that to me?”

Finn shakes his aching arms, swipes a dose of sweat from his brow and holds out his hand to Jannah as Poe starts to count:

“Six, seven, eight, forward, up, and surrender, and let her down down down, yeah, that’s it, you got it, and boom boom boom boom up, and again, good. That’s how I want it. And then the split. Six, seven, eight, prepare, and hop, again, and spin. No, right there you lose it. The second time. Don’t get lazy on me. The second one is the important one. Again, six, seven, eight, prepare, and up, and the OTHER, and spin. Right there, that’s it. Now, the whole thing. Ben, give me the music.”

Ben lifts his baton in a graceful arch and music covers the sounds of heavy breaths. Exhausted bodies start moving again with their accustomed grace.

Rey knows this sequence so inside out that she zones out her brain and focuses on building a mental grocery shopping list. Most of the time she is spending still in any case, with an occasional arabesque thrown in here and there.

She is kneeling down with her back bent, trying to remember if she still has milk left in the fridge, when an ear-splitting shriek alerts her. The music stops and everyone’s eyes turn to Jannah.

Apparently, Finn’s worn out arms gave out when lowering her down from the split, or in some other way she has ended up on the floor, holding her knee. The lower part of her leg is pointing to an impossible-looking direction.

“Sorry, sorry, hold on, hold on”, Finn keeps repeating as he runs to the internal phone to alert the in-house medic. He kneels down next to her to hold her hand as they wait. Her screaming eases a little but never completely stops.

The medic rushes in, takes a hold of Jannah’s leg and, with a quick jerk, twists it back to looking more normal, making her wail even louder but quickly fade into a quiet sob.

“There, that’s better for now. I’m still taking you to the hospital. The ligaments will need surgery and a couple of months rehab. Then, it'll be like new.”

Poe stomps back and forth and lets out a long stream of curses as the medic half supports, half carries Jannah out. Nobody dares to ask aloud what they are going to do to get ready for the premiere in less than three weeks.

In a few minutes, Poe composes himself and forces his thoughts to clear up. With this short notice, there is no hope of hiring anybody new. His eyes scan his own corps. It has to be one of them.

In an instant, the girls perk up, realising what is about to happen. Tired backs and ankles straighten and little gestures start, disguised as idle stretching but aimed at showing off their bodies.

But Poe’s eye is already caught by one of them. One who does not do anything special right now but who has been doing a steady, impeccable job in every practice.

“Rey, you do it”, he spits out.

“Me?” Rey is alerted from staring blankly at the door where Jannah just exited.

“Do you know it?”

“Of course.”

“Then you heard me. You do it. Finn, you ok?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to drop anyone anymore.” Finn manages a reserved but encouraging smile at Rey.

“Ok, let’s take it without the lifts today”, Poe finishes the discussion and gets back to work.

It takes a while for Rey to remember Odette’s part. She has, of course, learned it all at school but did not expect to be dancing it so early in an actual production. Actually, she had hardly expected to _ever_ be dancing it for an audience.

But they go first without music and Finn mercifully slows down whenever she needs a moment to think and gives hints in the form of whispers and nudges to help her pick up faster. In the end, even Poe seems initially pleased with her progress.

The hint of a smile on Poe’s lips disappears quickly, though, after he dismisses everyone for the evening. Before he can leave the opera house, he cannot escape passing by the office corridor and breaking the news to their producer. He nervously shuffles his hair the whole way up the stairs and to her door. With one final breath, he decides what he will say and knocks her door.

“Amilyn, do you have a moment?”

“Sure, come in! How was the rehearsal?”

With anybody else, he would first babble a long while about everything that went nicely and how many new artistic epiphanies he had about the story. But he knows that with Amilyn it is better to cut straight to the bone.

“We lost Jannah’s knee.”

Amilyn’s fingers with perfectly polished long nails stop their dance on her keyboard and she looks up from her screen with an icy expression.

“I told you to use double casting, preferably triple. There’s no way we’ll get another big name with this short notice.”

“I already solved it.” He tries to sound nonchalant and does a good job in his own opinion. “Rey will do it.”

“Rey who?”

“From the corps. She's excellent. You’ll like her. Just wait and see.”

“A corps girl is doing Odette now? Do you have any idea that I have sold out the premiere and the following three months using Jannah’s name? What do you think will happen when people find out that it’s not going to be whom they wanted to see but some nobody from the corps.”

“They’ll love her. She’s talented. And she works well with Finn.”

Amilyn stands up and a few steps take her right in front of Poe. He hates how consistently she wears heels despite her height. It makes it way too easy for her to look at him down her nose. Poe opens his mouth to defend himself further, but she lifts up a finger to silence him.

“Ok, I can use some words like ‘rising star’ and ‘phenomenal talent’, but she'd better live up to every single one of those.”

“She will. I’ll make sure of that.”

“You’d better.”

“Bye, Amilyn.”

“Bye, Poe.”

Sometimes Poe wonders what would happen if he just kept responding with a new ‘bye’. Probably she would repeat it, too, and they would go on forever, considering how determined Amilyn is to get the final word in their every conversation.

* * *

The final practice before the dress rehearsal has already taken until evening. Everone’s eyes dart between the clock and Poe, in a quiet hope that he would finally be satisfied. His hand tousles his hair in silence until he finally decides.

“Ok, that’s it, we’re done. Except Rey, we’ll stay with the Dying Swan.”

As everyone starts to remove their shoes, gather their things and head out, Finn lays a protective hand on Rey’s shoulder.

“Do you want me to stay to watch and – cushion?” With the last word, he gestures his head towards Poe.

Rey is moved by his offer but notices the exhaustion on his face. She is a little lighter than Jannah but does not have quite as much strength to help Finn out, so he has had to work extra when repeatedly lifting her throughout the past weeks. But he has not voiced a single complaint.

“No, you should rest. I can take him. This will be over soon anyways”, she assures.

They hug quickly before Finn leaves Rey alone with Poe and the orchestra. They start her last solo from the beginning, but before half-way Poe explodes.

“Enough! This is a waste of everyone’s time. Waste of everyone’s eye capacity watching you. What is Odette doing in this act?”

“Well, she’s dying.” Rey holds her head high, preparing for more crushing words to come.

“Then why the fuck do you look like a robot who dances this with perfect technique and ready to come back to repeat the exact same thing tomorrow? These should be your fucking last breaths! Again.”

They start again but this time Poe interrupts even earlier.

“Useless bullshit! That’s nothing. You’re nothing. You have some technical talent but there’s no soul in you. I suggest you find one. You have two days.”

He walks out and slams the backstage corridor door shut behind him. Rey looks after him, determined to not let out a single tear even though her throat feels tight with a whole pool of them. A bright voice from the orchestra pit alerts her:

“Rey, do you want me to wait for you?” Rose is packing up her clarinet and looking up towards the stage.

“No need to, just go home ahead.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’ll still stay for a bit.”

“Ok. Just… don’t take Poe too seriously, please. In my opinion, you’re fantastic.”

Rey does not bother answering. She gets back up en pointe and tries first just to move her arms, summoning in their arcs all the emotion she can imagine. That seems to change nothing, though. She knows all the expressions she is supposed to make in this part and has done them correctly every time in her own opinion, but for some reason, that is still not enough for Poe.

The musicians have left when she glides over the stage in the empty hall several times, experimenting on different speeds and intensities. But nothing feels significantly different. Frustrated, she stops mid-stage and takes a break to roar and scream out at the top of her lungs.

When she is finished and silence falls, she hears a quiet shuffle of papers from the orchestra pit. She turns to look and notices that she is not alone. A dark figure is still hunched over the conductor’s music stand. Horrified, Rey covers her mouth with her hands as he looks up and she meets the eyes of Ben Solo.

“Rough day?” he asks.

“More like rough two weeks.”

“Yeah, I know Poe can be intense.”

“Well, I’ve heard you’re not that much better yourself.”

Rey has not heard Ben talk much in the rehearsals with the whole crew. But she knows that in those occasions he is holding back in order not to disturb the dancers. She has heard from Rose how ruthless asshole he is to his orchestra whenever they practice alone. There are enthusiastic rumours that the _Wiener Philharmoniker_ wants him, and the opera’s musicians cannot wait for getting rid of him.

“What am I supposed to do when they don’t play perfectly? Imperfect dance just looks interesting. Imperfect music is agony.”

“Easy for you to say. Apparently, people can suffer from imperfect dance, too, so I should get back to fixing it.”

She rises en pointe again and starts the same arcs with her arms, now feeling even less of Odette’s graceful sorrow, as she becomes painfully conscious of Ben’s eyes on her. She tries to remember how many holes her training tights have and if there is anything more than a mesh left of the fabric over her butt.

Sure, the whole crew watches her in equally or more broken tights every day, Ben included, and she normally does not even think about it twice. And her tights are not even the worst among the crew. But with the two of them the only people in the quiet opera house, suddenly the only thing she can think about is how she looks.

“Is that how you’re looking for your soul?” Ben sounds genuinely curious, but Rey does not have time for a conversation if she wants to make it home to sleep in a reasonable time.

“Let me concentrate.”

Ben lets her make another doomed attempt before cutting her off again:

“Do you want to try with this?”

He has picked up a violin from his case.

Knowing all too well how her efforts so far have only wasted her time, she could as well try something different. So she shrugs her shoulders in approval.

“Take your shoes off.”

Rey obeys and her feet sing their normal ode of relief when released from the pressure of pointe shoes. She rolls her ankles in satisfaction as Ben tunes up, using no tuning fork or piano, relying purely on his ear.

“Don’t move before you feel it”, he says and positions the violin on his shoulder and locks it softly but firmly in place with his chin.

His shoulder is so wide that it makes the instrument look tiny. His fingers play with different tentative positions on the strings before he chooses one, brings the bow over them and slowly strokes.

The note is followed by another, and then another. Rey does not recognise the melody. Either it is something she does not know or something he is coming up with in the moment. But it is beautiful, heart-piercing in its simplicity.

“Feel it. Let it fill you, flow through you. Until there’s nothing else. Just you and the universe, and between it all, the music. Let _it_ move you.”

Ben’s voice has a rich timbre that blends with the sound of the violin into a harmony that seems to wrap around her. And for the first time in years, Rey does not follow a choreography but lets the music take hold of her body and move her as it wills. She does not care about her posture or ankles or the curve of her arms, just floats, crawls, rolls, flies and undulates as the melody unfolds.

Smoothly, Ben transitions to the first notes of the Dying Swan. Rey picks up the choreography, but he keeps stretching the pace so that she has time to feel every move before doing it. Finally, it is easy to feel that this is the end of her life. The loss wrenches her heart and washes through her whole body.

In the end, when she sinks down to sit on one knee and fold over the other leg, she is in tears. When she looks up at Ben, he lays the violin down in its case without taking his eyes off her.

“They’ll love that”, he says quietly.

“How would they? They’ve bought the tickets to see Jannah. I’m nothing.”

“No, you're not. Not to me. And after two days, not to anyone else either. You show this and you’ll be a star.”

Rey wants to gather arguments to protest – how different it will be with the shoes, with the costume, with the audience – how she’ll never be able to repeat this. But Ben is already packing up and leaving, recommending her to do the same and get some rest.

She waits until he disappears before lazily making her way to the dressing room. Walking out and towards home along Kärntner Straße, she is astonished to find her body feeling no longer like it has just gone through more than two weeks of the most intense training of her life in crash preparation for her first lead role. It is like all of that was just washed away.

At the door, Rey stops and slows down her movements when picking up her keys and opening the lock. She will have to make it into her room quietly, as chances are that Rose is already asleep.

* * *

Ben conducts the premiere like making the whole orchestra play for Rey alone. Every once in a while, he locks eyes with her and they quietly agree the timing together before proceeding. His steady and assuring presence makes it all easy. Whether she is on Finns arms or her own legs, she feels like flying rather than dancing. And all the emotions, which she used to only play as gestures on her face, easily flow through her whole being.

In the end, the crowd stands up to clap. When Rey backs next to Finn after reverence, he taps her back and whispers:

“Well done, Rey. You’re a star.”

Then he lets go so that she can run gracefully to the edge of the stage where Ben is already waiting for her to pick him up to receive the orchestra’s applause. She takes his arm and reaches up for the cheek kiss.

She has not exactly prepared for this, with too many other things on her mind. Besides, what could possibly go wrong with a simple cheek kiss?

She leans for his left cheek, just as he leans for her right. As a result, their lips meet in the middle, right under the eyes of a full premiere audience.

They both gasp as they back away and their eyes meet. But they quickly adopt their stage smiles and proceed to the middle of the row of dancers for more applause.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops! Where does this accidental kiss lead to? We'll see in the next chapter.


	2. Chapter 2

Poe whistles and takes a few pas de bourrées in the corridor on his way to Amilyn’s office. Yesterday’s hangover is gone and he is ready to take on the world, or at least his producer. This time even she will have to admit that he, Rey and Finn are the heroes of this production. She already almost confessed it the day before yesterday when tipsy enough to smile at Poe and give a friendly pat on his back. But he is determined to hear it from her sober mouth.

Before he established a career as a celebrated director, he used to teach in a ballet school. Every once in a while, some of the parents would question his methods and ask him to yell at their kids less because they had again been crying all night or something equally pathetic. To that, he would always say that he cannot stop what is the only way to make them understand what he wants.

His method has proved itself again. Once he sufficiently yelled at Rey, she did exactly what he wanted. Even Poe himself was truly moved by her premiere performance. And from the applause and shouts of _bravo!_ , it was clear that the audience felt the same. His knock on Amilyn’s door is confident and loud and he does not even wait for her permission before storming in.

“See? I told you so.” He savours the feeling of every word in his mouth, looking at Amilyn down his nose now that he still has the chance while she is sitting.

“Yeah, it was pretty good.” Amilyn barely looks up from the papers she has over her desk.

“How can you call that ‘pretty good’? Weren’t you there? Haven’t you read the critiques? Come on, look me in the eye and try saying that it was anything less than outstanding.”

That makes Amilyn’s face melt into a smile, and she does look up at him properly.

“You’re right, Poe. That was outstanding. You and your crew delivered exactly what I asked.”

He feels almost uncomfortably flattered but focuses on letting his chest swell and take it in, not knowing when this will happen next time. When he cannot take Amilyn’s subtly appreciating face any longer, he breaks the silence:

“How are the ticket sales going then?”

“Very well, actually. Two more months sold out in just two days.”

“What!? Two months? I mean… It was great, but based on everything you’ve said about our target group, I thought…”

“Yes, they rarely react this strongly. But it’s not only our target group who are booking the tickets. And it’s not only the performance they have gone crazy about.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you only read the morning papers and the critiques? You should check out the afternoon ones.”

She stands up and passes him a sample from her desk. Poe takes it reluctantly. It is _Die Abendpresse_ , which he would never pay money for because it is full of trash about celebrities and fad diets and other sensational “news”.

The page that Amilyn has open is half devoted to a picture of Rey and Solo kissing on the edge of the stage. The title calls it boldly ‘The Reylo Kiss’, and the text dives eagerly into elaborate speculations about a backstage romance between _Wiener Staatsoper_ ’s best conductor and a supposed nobody from the corps de ballet, who turns out to be an awakening star.

“You see, this is what sells the tickets”, Amilyn points out. “Poe, I want them to do it again. Preferably after every performance and progressively longer every time.”

“What, seriously? You want me to _tell_ them?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But they’re our employees! How can we give them that kind of task? Let’s say that even half of this disgustingly coloured trash speculation in this paper was true and they had something going on, isn’t it still their private thing if they choose to kiss in front of an audience or not?”

“They’re artists. Their job is to entertain. And entertainment is not just the performance but everything that happens around it – everything that stirs people’s imagination. You stick to deciding about what happens during the performance, and with everything else, you do as I say.”

The bright blue eyes look sternly down on him again, but his brown ones face them with equal stubbornness.

“What makes you think they would even accept such an unethical assignment?”

“Artboy, I wouldn’t be so quick to doubt that after our state budget was cut in half. We need full houses on a consistent basis if we all want to keep our jobs. I’m sure they understand that we need all hands on deck – or should I say _all mouths_...”

“Solo will leave this sinking ship anyways and go to _der Philharmoniker_. He won’t care.”

“But I’m sure Rey does. She’ll be hungry for more lead roles after this. And she’ll have the chance if she just keeps us afloat.”

* * *

Rey is tucking the left set of false eyelashes in their place when she hears a loud knock on her dressing room door.

“Come in!” she shouts without taking her eyes off the mirror.

Once the lashes look satisfactory, she refocuses her eyes and sees that Poe has appeared in the mirror behind her. But she has never seen Poe like this. If it was anyone else, she would swear that he looks flustered. Rey turns and tries to look into his eyes but he avoids it.

“I want to say again that you did excellent”, he tells her clothing rack. “Just keep up with the same and tonight’s audience will fall in love with you, too.”

“Eh, thanks.”

“And also…” His eyes frantically scan the room for anything reasonable to look at but her face.

“Yes?”

Rey is beginning to enjoy the feeling of seeing Poe uncomfortable. He chooses to fix his gaze on her feet.

“The thing you did in the end, with Ben, when you…”

“Kissed? Oh, I’m sorry, I swear it was an accident. You know what happens when you aim for the opposite cheeks. It won't happen again. Now I remember it’s the right cheek.”

“No, no. I mean… Amilyn liked it. It has, kind of, maybe sold quite a lot of tickets, so I should ask… wouldyoudothatagain?”

“What did you say?”

Poe hates his mumbling voice and uncertain eyes at the moment. No matter what spineless coward has temporarily taken over his body, he has to get the trademark confidence of Poe Dameron back. He makes a determined grunt, swallows, meets Rey’s eyes that look curiously mismatching with only one of them wearing the false lashes.

“We want you to do that again, after every performance, each time a bit longer.”

Rey blinks in disbelief, feeling almost like her left eyelid lags behind the right one because of the uneven air resistance.

“Uh, I see. But what if he doesn’t want to?”

“Well, he wouldn’t put up a fight in front of an audience, would he?”

Rey cannot argue to that, so she just nods and turns back to the mirror to continue with her makeup. Poe gives a friendly nudge on her back.

“Good. I’m counting on you, my star.”

* * *

When this audience is standing, applauding and shouting their bravos and Rey runs to pick up Ben, he first explicitly offers her his right cheek. But Poe was right. When Rey’s resolute hands grab Ben's face and turn it straight towards her, he does not resist but lets her kiss him on the mouth, a little longer than the day before yesterday. The applause intensifies.

Quickly, Ben picks it up that this is their habit now. And as the weeks go by and the kisses turn longer, he grows bolder, abandoning the tactfully light touch on Rey's arm and letting his hand grasp her neck, shoulder blade, hip, the small of her back or the back of her head – only one spot per night in order to not make it obvious to the audience what he is doing. But inch by inch, night by night he is exploring her body, and wherever he touches, Rey’s skin is left burning and waiting for the end of the next performance.

Since they do not have rehearsals anymore, they essentially do not meet each other outside of the stage with a full house of eyes on them. Occasionally, they run into each other in the opera house corridors. But in those situations, they only exchange quick hellos and continue their separate ways.

Thanks to their repeated stunt, Amilyn sells out every performance and a bunch of extra ones she schedules. But eventually, even the last one of the extra performances draws close, and Rey finds her body already aching for the approaching loss.

Rose has been trying to dig out of her how she actually feels about Ben and how much of the steadily intensifying kissing has been only for show and how much for something else. But Rey has avoided her questions since she has not been able to answer those even for herself.

The last night, they both vanish into the kiss, oblivious to the cheering crowd. Making an exception to his usual caution, Ben glides his hand from Rey’s neck down the waves of her spine. She lets her own hand travel down the lapel of his tailcoat and grasp the fabric into her fist on his right side, hoping that the audience will not see how she is clinging to him like he was her lifeline.

When they break apart, the dark depth of his eyes makes her knees weak. Like two magnets, they are pulled into another kiss greeted with more clapping and whistling by the audience. Eventually, they bring themselves to stop again. Rey’s legs feel so shaky that she is not sure if she will make it across the stage. But she clings to Ben’s arm and works through the distance step by step. He wraps his arm around her and squeezes her to his side even as he gestures the orchestra to stand up and the audience to thank them.

After a few more waves, bows and air kisses to their final audience, it is all over. Ben walks back down to the pit and Rey follows the other dancers to the dressing rooms. Even taking her shoes off does not feel like much now. It is overshadowed by the churning in her stomach and the burn on her skin and lips and the pain in her heart when thinking that this was probably it. If the rumours are true, Ben will go to the _Wiener Philharmoniker_ and, even if she would get another lead role, she will never experience this with him again.

She swallows back the surfacing tears when she hears a familiar knock on her door. The door only opens enough to fit Poe’s head in between.

“A little surprise before the party. Press conference in the lobby. In fifteen minutes.”

Rey has no words. She only buries her face into her hand. A press conference is the last thing she would want to think about right now.

“Yeah, I know, I know. Not my favourite thing to do at the moment either. But Amilyn arranged it. It’s important for something like creating anticipation for future productions. So we just suck it up for half an hour or so and then we’re on our way to the party.”

“Ok, I’ll be there”, Rey manages to say quietly and gets to work with changing her clothes.

* * *

“Finn, many of our readers are Jannah’s fans and were devastated to hear that she got injured. How was it for you to change partners so close to the premiere?”

“Not the easiest thing of course. And I was also worried about Jannah. But now I can gladly say that she has recovered and is already working on a new production. So all ended well and Rey was such a quick learner that I couldn’t have wished for a better partner to switch to with this short a notice.”

Finn looks at Rey with the kind of smile that helps her relax a notch despite the awkward situation. They have been sitting in the opera house lobby surrounded by journalists for surely almost an hour already.

“Rey, our readers are dying to know: how was it to prepare for your first lead role?”

“Well, I wasn’t given a lot of time. So I pretty much just tried to stay sane and rely on what I learned at school, and of course on this wonderful crew. The credit really goes to everyone who supported me.”

“And what’s next for you?”

“Errr, I hope…” Rey glances side-eyed at Poe but Amilyn jumps to fill in:

“We have plenty of plans for her. For now, let’s just say, you’ll be seeing more of her.”

She winks an eye at Rey, who smiles back thankfully.

“Ben, your work at _die Statsopeer_ has always been remarkable. Now, of course, that begs the question: are the rumours true that you are about to move to _der Philharmoniker_?”

“Well, I have been offered a position there. And…” He gives space for an anticipatory silence. “…nothing has been signed yet, but I think I’ll take it.”

Rey’s heart sinks and she quickly looks down to hide it.

“And how about your relationship with Rey? Our readers are anxious to know everything that happened backstage.”

All the journalists lean forward. Ben chuckles and shakes his head.

“Not much has happened actually? At least not what you think.”

“But why?”

“Why? Is that really your question? What am I supposed to answer to that?”

“Our readers want the truth.”

“The truth? To be honest, I haven’t known if Rey would want it. I barely know anything about her, like if she's seeing someone already, or if she’s into me at all. You know, at least in the orchestra, people mostly hate me and can’t wait for me to move to _der Philharmoniker_ so that new musicians can start hating me there. I don’t have a lot of reasons to expect that this gorgeous, sweet and talented dancer would actually _like_ me.”

Ben has already stopped addressing the journalist and speaks directly towards Rey. Her mouth plops open and she cannot stop herself from staring back into his eyes.

“And would you want that, Rey?" the same journalist asks without getting an answer. "Rey?” 

“What?” She tries to force herself out of the spell and focus on the question at hand.

“I’m talking about an actual relationship with him. Like not just the famous Reylo kisses on stage but also something juicy behind the scenes. Like dating him and kissing wherever you like, and talking with him since you apparently haven’t done much of that. Would you want that?”

Eyes still on Ben’s, Rey’s lips curve into a smile.

“Yes, I would.”

“That solves it, then, doesn’t it? I can’t believe I just finished my workday by matching Reylo.”

Ben’s face lights up with a hopeful grin.

“Finished? Does that mean we’re done?”

He does not wait for an answer but sweeps Rey up from her chair and towards the Gerstner Foyer where the party has already started.


End file.
